I have many Digital Identities. My Identities include professional, personal, and even educational. Using social media as a network has opened up a means for communication. A form to connect with others all at once instead of constantly having an individual face-to-face connection. To help create an engaging network, the capability of expressing creativity and the allowance of time to edit and share enhances my message of what I want to reveal to my network society. Though this can be hard sometimes due to the lack of emotional expression. In other words, the risk of public communication is that it is up for self-interpretation and assumptions that may seem misleading to the creator/audience. Though for the most part, it comes with a motive when making a post. With these motives, the audience of interest tends to acknowledge the content and continue exploring my digital identity. As Danah Boyd states, “we need to let go of our cultural fetishization with the individual as the unit of analysis. We need to develop models that position networks, groups, and communities at the centre of our discussion.” (350) In other words, for our PLN to become successful, we must ensure that we create an open community that is straightforward and does not lead to false interpretations.
Boyd, Danah 2012 Surveillance & Society: Network Privacy Microsoft Research, USA
